Monday, October 06, 2008

For nearly ten years now, Seattle band The Dead Science have been one of the most stridently drastic and dramatic bands in the world of independent pop music. Just over a year ago, KDVS Recordings released a split 7" of The Dead Science with Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, and this summer, the band released their first full-length album--Villainaire--for their new label, Constellation Records, also home to another outstanding pop deconstructivist in Carla Bozulich's Evangelista. I'm no longer bummed that Deerhoof's last couple of records have been so rhythmically un-daring (relatively, anyway) because the Dead Science have only ratcheted up the excitement now...jazzier, more drastic and obtuse than ever, yet undeniably alluring!

In support of Villainaire, the Dead Science are touring this month and will play a "KDVS Presents" event on Thursday, October 16th at Luigi's Fungarden in Sacramento (1050 20th Street, #160) with local psych desert-drifters San Kazakgascar and the Canadian neo-no-wave danceparty, Twin Crystals. (All ages, 8-11pm only, $5) This is a tremendous band in live performance.

Dead Science guitarist/vocalist Sam Mickens emailed back and forth with me after I'd finally come to appreciate that--while all of their albums and EPs have been very good or even great--Villainaire, replendent in beckoning beauty yin to severely obtuse angular yang, is their first true masterpiece!

Me: For better and for worse, so many critics and bloggers talk about The Dead Science as music with a high degree of difficulty and complication---not just for you musicians, but for the impatient or casual listener as well. I love the challenge and reward, but surely a lotta people wilt almost immediately. How do you suppose this difficulty and complication affects your relationship with your audience? Both fans and a more general audience?

Sam: Well, I don't think of the music itself as exceedingly orintentionally difficult; it is definitely, for us, fairly pure popmusic, in the sense that it is perpetually about trying to constructand refine the most exciting and emotionally decisive moments we can,though I appreciate that what we consider the most beautiful andimmediate musical decisions may sometimes register as unusual or "out"to others. I think in terms of lyrical content I do value the idea ofencoding and encrypting a lot, and trying to build patterns and arcsthat may only be readable with invested attention.

Me: Particularly in the pop/rock world, complication is thought by many to be an unnecessary contrivance? But I get the sense that these complications unfold your genuine selves? How authentic an expression is The Dead Science's music?

Sam: 100% pure realness.

Me: As individual musicians, you each seem to have a very singular voice, which I especially notice in your live performances. It makes me wonder how collaborative a project is the Dead Science during songwriting? What do you value about Jherek and Nick's individual approaches to the process? How much of a negotiation process is it to write a new song, or do things snap together magically? (A combination of both, I imagine...)

Sam: Generally things snap together really rapidly and in a nice group-mindsort of way. I think, most basically, our songs will usually startwith Jherek or I having some kind of musical figure or figures that wethen build up from together. There is a good amount of negotiation inthat we will sometimes move through a few different approaches toarrangements but generally we all coalesce pretty easily on what seemsthe illest.

Me: How is Villainaire different from any of your previous records?

Sam: I think that musically and in terms of the arrangements andproduction, it is much more fully realized and complete than anythingwe've made, due largely to the fact that we made it all ourselves,with Jherek recording, so we took absolutely as much time as we feltnecessary to make things as we wanted. I think thematically, too, itis the most thoroughly designed and well-honed record we've done; itforms a much stronger whole and the themes that exist in the recordpervade every atom of it. I think it is also more instilled withagency, violence, and forward motion; where the last two full-lengthswere maybe more about being submerged and buried by energies, this oneis much more in aggressive concert with them.

Me: You write about hip hop with such grace and authority for The Stranger (popular alt-weekly newspaper in Seattle). That struck me as something completely unexpected. In what ways does your appreciation for hip hop creep into what you do with The Dead Science?

Sam: In a ton of ways, and not just my appreciation for Hip Hop, but Nickand Jherek's as well. I think those influences are certainly muchmore pronounced on Villainaire than on anything we've previously done;the music itself definitely bears more of the blood of modern R & Band Hip Hop, and some of the ways of approaching and dealing with thecontent are definitely somewhat similar to rap records.

Me: I've heard about the School of Villainy-The Villainaire Prequel mixtape. What an astounding idea! How did this idea develop? I can't even think of a precedent!

Sam: Thanks, Rick. I don't know of any precedent for the mixtape in the waythat we made it, though obviously there are countless excellentmixtape predecessors from the Hip Hop world. The idea just kind ofsprung out, but in developing it and working on the tracks, itdefinitely took shape as something with two main intentions-one beingto work on lots of sorts of songs that are somewhat outside of thenatural realm of our band and try to exert our creative powers in amore free-roaming way, and the other being to involve, showcase, andculturally gene-splice with both our friends and immediate communityand music and film that we worship and adore.

About Me

As long as DIY bands and artists keep me amazed, I will keep doing radio and extreme-blogging as a tribute to them. In case you are an old classmate looking for me, yes, this is "Rick Ele" here.
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